The King Must Be the Challenger
The body was sound. The foot he set down was light, and every sound came to him sharp, as if it had been made at his very ear.
The lightning crossing those arms was a medal worn to be seen, and a pressure meant to shrink whoever stood opposite. And the hair streaming in a place where not a breath of wind moved? Feeling, risen high, was enough on its own to change the air around him.
Na Wangrang caught a faint smell of scorching off him, the smell that proves nothing remains where lightning has struck but ash. The man reeked of it.
Thunder's Footsteps. One of the turncoats. He was walking straight toward Na Wangrang now.
"Are you here to challenge me?"
Na Wangrang asked it outright. No preamble was required. To come out under so many eyes and pay them no mind meant the choice had already been made.
Thunder's Footsteps took his stand before Na Wangrang without flinching. Elder Wildflower, Ookami, and Yamaga watched for an ambush that might yet come. Unease stirred among the werewolves.
"Why would the elder who searched hardest for the king step forward?"
"He isn't truly going to challenge him?"
"Impossible."
"That's treason."
"Traitor!"
"He may have given the clan more than anyone can count—"
"And he still dares challenge the throne?!"
Grrrrrr.
Someone failed to swallow their rage and let out a snarl. The moment the channel opened, anger poured from every throat. A prickling killing intent rose on all sides. These were werewolves raised as warriors from birth, three hundred of them if there was one. If Na Wangrang gave the signal, every werewolf there would kill Thunder's Footsteps with cruelty to spare.
Thunder's Footsteps was glad of that killing intent. Yes. This is how it ought to be. This is a wolf. Not some mutt chasing a fantasy, but a wolf that should run the steppe and reign from the mountain heights. The struggle. The life. The nobility. Thunder's Footsteps loved them with his whole heart, and so he grieved. Their numbers were thinning. The ground on which they might stand was vanishing. They could not even name what they were, and the way they lived now—hiding without end—had never felt so wretched.
That was why Thunder's Footsteps hated the king. He hated the ancestors.
Why did they never look for another way? Why were they unable to give it up? Why did our ancestors leave us a thing called a king? Why leave us that, and make us suffer for it?
It was a will that belonged to Thunder's Footsteps alone, one that chewed up even the essence of what they were: his own rebellion, his own revolution, a thrashing against the ruin bearing down on them. The time to change it had come. As if it were fate. As if he were meant to complete the labor he had carried this far. The last adversary, and the legend itself, stood before him.
"Your Majesty."
Thunder's Footsteps opened a heavy mouth. The irises that had been dyed red grew faint.
"I must amend what I said."
"It is not I who challenges."
"It is the king who must challenge."
Na Wangrang's hand went up at once. Elder Wildflower, his neck flushed a furious red, bit down on his lip and barely managed to draw back. The other werewolves did the same. A few had already shed their human shapes and dropped into fighting stances.
"May I ask the reason?"
"As much as you like. If you wish, I can speak until the full moon has risen."
"Fine. Let's hear it."
Thunder's Footsteps laughed, bold as anything.
"Your Majesty. How much do you know of werewolves?"
"……Honestly, there is a great deal I don't know."
Na Wangrang's father had seldom opened his mouth about his own origins. What Na Wangrang had heard from him, and learned, was the language, a little common knowledge, and what to do if he turned into a wolf without warning.
"Would it be fair to say you know almost nothing?"
"Yes."
"Then that is why the king must be the one to challenge."
It was talk that grasped at empty air. Na Wangrang held his peace and waited for the rest.
"Your Majesty. How much time do you think our clan has thrown away, searching for you?"
"Several hundred years, no less."
"Perhaps longer still. Do you understand what that means?"
"In all that time, the clan let countless chances slip past."
"A road on which we might have grown. A road out into the light. A road on which we might have made a society."
"Name them and there is no end. Lament them and there is no bottom to it."
"Believing an empty legend! Believing that damned legend, when no one can even say who passed it down! They collapsed under the years and died!"
"Because of you!"
"What is a king! We are people who ought to be worrying first about the child born tomorrow! What leisure did we ever have!"
"Humans breed until they have babies to throw away, and we only shrink, day after day!"
"A clan that once numbered in the hundreds has today barely cleared a hundred thousand. The wolves standing with their feet on the soil of this earth—a mere hundred thousand! Humans number more than seven billion!"
From the hundreds to a hundred thousand. Across those centuries, a number that had done nothing but dwindle. A count that drew no line between mixed blood and pure. Subtract those who had let go of werewolf society and dissolved into the human one, and it shrank further still. A people that no longer even reached a hundred thousand. That they had gnashed their teeth and held the line for centuries was a wonder in itself.
"Can Your Majesty bear it? The weight of us, going extinct?"
"The way the legend says you can."
"Can you restore us?"
"Before your life runs out?"
"I am asking whether you can say it with certainty."
A question carrying one elder's whole heart. A desperation that could only come from someone who truly feared for the clan and hungered for an answer. The air of the gathering, which had been boiling with killing intent, sank, because they understood the feeling that had driven him out.
Na Wangrang understood it too. Set aside that the man was a turncoat, and he could feel that this one truly loved his people and was proud of them. His shoulders grew heavy. If the man was right, could he do it? As he had when he first declared himself, with that shallow thought that he might as well try—could he lead them? He had set the board to draw the turncoats in. He had not considered that a turncoat might hold a conviction like this. It was too much to dismiss as a pretext for pulling him down. A king's instinct affirmed the turncoat's sincerity.
The other turncoat elders behind him were the same. They had braced for death and betrayed the clan. The road was badly wrong, but the conviction at the root of it must not be denied. Only if he took even that conviction onto his own back could he rightly be called a king.
"You're right."
Na Wangrang nodded.
"As Elder Thunder says. I was the challenger."
Not as a king appointed by fate. As Na Wangrang, he had to prove in this place, and demonstrate, whether he was qualified to lead them as king. If he could not, he would have to give up the throne.
"Thanks to what is in your heart, Elder Thunder, a thought that was still unripe has cleared."
However.
"There is one thing I have to settle."
Na Wangrang threw off his outer coat.
"How far did you go, Elder Thunder?"
Elder Last Day's Sunlight. Elder Butterfly of Flame. Elder Fang of the Marsh as well.
"How far did you go to save the clan?"
"……There comes a time when, for the sake of the greater line, one must abandon the lesser."
A bitter smile sat in Thunder's Footsteps' voice.
"And what greater line was worth abandoning the lesser for?"
"Isn't it obvious? The restoration of the clan."
"By what method?"
"By taking the aid of science."
"Conception."
"Conception……."
Na Wangrang let out a short laugh. Who did they take for a fool? He had already heard all of it.
"Not conception. Cloning, isn't it."
Cloning werewolves…….
"I don't know who thought of it, but it is a truly foolish idea."
"To think you knew even that……."
Tuk. Tuduk.
Fur pushed out of Thunder's body. His clothes split, unable to hold the swelling bulk.
"Grrrrrr……. Then there really is only one way left."
Thunder's eyes dyed a full, unmistakable red. What little remained of his conviction was painted over.
"A shame. If your method had been a proper one, I would have gladly given you this place."
"You can hand it over even now."
Thunder chuckled through a wolf's face. His eyes ran over Na Wangrang's body, sly and lingering.
"For the sake of the far future. You would have to endure a little trouble."
"I don't know what you're thinking, but for the record, I'm a man."
"……You were male?"
Thunder's eyes went round.
"He was a man?"
The crowd, it seemed, was no different. Na Wangrang wept on the inside.
"As expected of the king. You shatter even shallow common sense without effort."
"Haa……."
At a mockery that was not quite mockery, Na Wangrang sighed, stripped off his dress shirt, and bared himself. Under the sunlight a cute set of abs and skin white as snow insisted on his sex.
"Satisfied?"
"Hm……. Well. What does it matter."
Even a male had his uses. Thunder set his stance: both hands and both feet to the ground, moving on all fours. The posture in which, as a wolf, he was strongest.
"Your Majesty, pray shatter common sense for us once more."
"Come."
Na Wangrang crooked a finger. Across his chest, fur began quietly to grow. Thunder moved as if he had been waiting for nothing but the king's word. He drove all four legs and shot forward.
"Kuha-ha-ha-hung!!!"
Thunder's speed was the greatest in the clan. The arrogant king will not even be able to see me. His fangs aimed for the king's leg—the king's still-frail leg, only just beginning to swell. The fangs touched—
Crash!
And then, all at once, Thunder's body was flung back.
"……?!"
What? What just happened?
Thunder turned the impact into a breakfall and looked ahead in haste. There—
—————!!!
A single wolf stood.
